


Medea

by More_night



Series: Medea [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6169894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will finds a dog and is late for dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medea

There was no river here, but he enjoyed walking through the woods. His mind cleared when the trees surrounded him, crowded his vision, the branches pulling at his soul. As dusk fell, he walked closer to the road, enough to hear the occasional car in the distance. That is when he saw the box. Cardboard, on its side, part of it crumpled and sodden, but he could see the patch of black fur inside. It glittered in the dark with the last of the sunlight, like liquid, _blood from the wound flooding the room until it reached his throat, him and the stag drowned together, that night, in Hannibal’s kitchen_.

Normally, he would not have hesitated. Now, he wondered if he was still this person.

For a time, he tried to will away the pull of care as it sank its fingers in his chest. Rationalizations never helped. Someone else will do it. No, no one ever did. It’s an animal, it’ll be fine. No, it won’t. Domestication sucks like that. Once you commit to it, you have to stick with it forever. Even when they wake you up at night, even when you’re exhausted, even when you just want to be alone.

The next step, he took without really knowing. He licked his lips and they remembered the pursed, round shape. Only, when he whistled, the scar in his cheek hurt.

In the box, the fur jolted and two bright eyes stared his way. Then there was nothing he could do: all the world looked at him, in pain and need.

He took a moment to stretch his right leg, then reached in his pocket.

He had never needed to use the phone before. It went straight to voicemail, no ringing.

“I...” he said. “I’ll be late for dinner.” He paused and thought about saying “Don’t worry”, but he did not and shut the phone off.

 

* * *

 

When night came, Will asked himself how long he would wait, or could afford to wait, right now. During the past hour, he had managed to get closer to the box, moving slowly, keeping his head down and his hands flat by his sides. The dog was not moving, but not growling either. The old tear from the knife wound in his leg had started to throb and he had sat under a tree, his coat spread under him. Now it was growing colder, but the smell of the decaying leaves was fresh, earthy, like coming home.

In the woods, the night was not exactly night. It was ink, like being blind and alone, with the terror of being surrounded by an infinity of hushed noises. Through the pitch-black wall, only the dog's eyes gleamed, blinking steadily.

The last thing to cross his mind before he fell asleep was that he could die like this. It would be good. It would probably be best.

 

* * *

 

Will woke to find Hannibal sitting on the ground at his side. He had wrapped Will in a blanket and brought a portable gaslight that encased them in a diffuse glow.

“There’s a GPS in the phone, isn’t there?” Will asked.

Hannibal’s lips formed a thin smile while he pulled out a thermos and glass tupperwares from the bag at their side. He poured tea in a plastic cup and handed it to Will. “In the morning, you go west until you reach the Mesinger ravine, then you come back from the south. In the afternoon, you leave toward the north, so you can climb the hill and catch the setting sun, then you follow the road back.” Hannibal blew on his own tea. “As if you paced a cage.”

“Except there’s no cage.”

“I assume it depends on the point of view,” Hannibal said. “Drink up. You’re cold.”

Will finished his tea, then tried to sit up and winced at the twitch in his shoulder. Hannibal noticed it, but said nothing and passed him the food container instead. The _blanquette de veau_ had cooled slightly.

“How long does this normally take?” Hannibal said, nodding in direction of the box. The dog must have smelled the food: it had slipped its head outside.

Taking another piece of soft veal to his mouth, Will chewed carefully. Behind his cheeks, right under his eyes, he felt tears swelling up, _his house in Wolf Trap, and Winston and drinking bourbon after ice-fishing, when everything was quiet, and what was the lie, then or now?_ If Hannibal could smell or see anything of it, none of it showed. Will cleared his throat. “A few hours at least. He’ll need to get used to the way I smell. That’s probably done. Then understand I don’t want to harm him,” he said. “My personal record is a little over 72 hours for the whole process.”

“It’s a female,” Hannibal said. He put his fork down and eyed the dog. “And from the smell, she’s given birth a few days ago. Maybe less.”

“There’s some gray around her nose. She’s probably old. If she was in a mill, they thought it was her last litter, took the pups and dumped her out here.”

He brought the two last pieces of creamy endives to his mouth, pushing the remaining veal to the side. Hannibal looked sideways at him. His lips twisted somewhat, before he said, “Given her state, offal would be preferable. Raw meat at least.”

Will remembered _washing Mason’s blood from Buster’s fur in the bathroom sink. He eyed the rills of pink going down the drain and Buster stood, happy to be in the water, untouched, warm, as if nothing had happened. Will wondered if he himself had changed at all. After all, Mason was unconscious in his living room, his blood spilled on Will’s carpets and chairs, and he felt nothing save for horror tunnelling deep in his mind, until it reached bone. But all the rest was cold._

 _The walls palpitated around him like with a life of their own. Hannibal watched him from the corridor, almost invisible in the darkness. But Will knew that he, too, was searching for an answer. That way, both of them wondered what Will really was. There had always been the tortuous hope,_ that once he would know, things would get better.

He got up slowly. The dog pulled back in the box. Will carried the container of food nearly thirty feet to the left and placed it down in a clear spot, under a small birch tree.

With cautious steps, he walked back to Hannibal, who offered him his hand to help him sit down, and Will took it. The wind picked up, first high in the trees, then lower, rustling the leaves above their heads. Hannibal unpacked an uncorked bottle of Cabernet and poured them glasses. Will drew the blanket tighter around himself and let the wine warm him.

 

* * *

 

The dog had left her box and had begun to inch toward the food, eyes never leaving them. Will had put the tupperware at a non-threatening distance, as far from them as from the dog’s shelter. Yet, she was alert. Her udders hung low, a fair shade of vulnerable flesh in the night.

“I hesitated. Before I stopped for her,” Will said.

“What made you hesitate?”

Will looked down at his empty glass. “I didn’t know if I could still do that. Or if I wouldn’t just end up hurting her, somehow.”

Hannibal smiled, eyes still on the dog. She was halfway between her box and the food, but she had stopped, wary. “Change is only ever relative. Some things must remain the same. If not, we wouldn’t even perceive the shifts for what they are.”

“Maybe you deal better with change than I do.”

“I had three years to... deal.”

Will turned and found Hannibal’s eyes on him, his hair on his brow. He looked tired like that. “Did you?”

Many words formed and died before coming to Hannibal’s lips. “Closed walls, unvarying circumstances, binds of time and space provided ideal conditions to do so, as it turns out. The only thing I did not foresee was that you’d change as well.”

Will swallowed and looked away. _Molly’s image had begun to lose its consistency. It had gone much deeper than that, something like chill sticking_ to his spine. It had taken him a long time to see it for the twist of shame and regret that it was. “I wish I had the opportunity to be as unclouded for myself as you think I am,” he said.

“You only need,” Hannibal lifted his hand to trace the outline of Will’s face in the air, not meeting the skin, but Will stilled, as if physically touched “the proper light, Will. And then you are aligned, like crystal, transparent to yourself and blazing for everyone else.”

“You looked exactly like that,” Will breathed. “When I figured it out. In the Hobbs’ kitchen.”

Hannibal’s features went blank on the surface, while moved from underneath, and he let his hand drop back in his lap. “How is that?”

Will tried many words in his mind. It was not awe, nor fear, nor precisely love. “I still don’t know. I guess it’s as close to nakedness as it gets. Something desolate. That was how I remembered you when I was in prison, so that I wouldn’t forget.”

For a moment, neither of them moved, as if what was there would crack, then wither. The wind pushed Hannibal’s hair further down on his forehead, in disarray. His eyes glistened in the crude lamp light.

A low slurping noise caught their attention and they both turned to see the dog, licking the container clean, pushing it through the leaves with her nose. Will smiled. “Pick a name,” he told Hannibal.

Placing his glass down, Hannibal pulled his scarf higher around his neck. “Medea.”

Will arched his eyebrows. “Tragic.”

“Animals’ lives are tragic. Having your offspring ripped from your side. Abandoned weakened in a desert wood. Left to die, with no one coming to look for you.”

“No one but me.”

Hannibal moved to refill their glasses, his lips wearing a veil of a smile.

“She probably didn’t kill her children,” Will pointed out, after taking a sip.

Hannibal thumbed the rim of his glass. “Who knows?”

Will let a moment pass. “I don’t think you dealt at all,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Hannibal said. “It’s difficult to say when things stop changing. Even matter that we believe to be inert is in fact animated.”

“And inversely most changes that we can observe are cyclical and constant in their laws.”

From the way Hannibal’s eyes searched for the shadows on his face, Will knew he retained the memory. Yet another part of him became immaterial, transported in Hannibal's mind. Will felt the transmutation like a pivot that his soul would revolve around, always departing and always held close. “I like you this way, metamorphosed by every contact and every sight,” Hannibal said.

A gust of wind reached them and dead leaves erupted off the ground. The dog jolted away from the food container and barked at them, suddenly scared. Will watched her, restless again, tense and nervous. “It’ll be a long night.”

“So it will.”

 

* * *

 

Hannibal did not remember falling asleep, precisely. They had finished the wine and he had placed the empty bottle back in the bag, along with the used glassware and his tupperware container. The wind had grown steadier. Then he was waking up, on his side, his cheek in Will’s bundled coat, the blanket tucked so tightly around him, he could almost recall Will placing it so.

It was almost dawn. Noises were manifold, the air was warmer. He tilted his head up slightly and found Will twenty feet away, crouching near a pine scrub. His left arm was extended and the dog sniffed his fingers guardedly and exhaustively. Eventually, Will slid his hand on Medea’s neck. She let him.

**Author's Note:**

> The Mesinger ravine is in Germany, near Lübbecke, a relatively small town.
> 
> On [tumblr](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I'm currently writing The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, a plot-based post-season 3 story that works as a companion piece to [The Lightest Way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5127935/chapters/11798597). I've been having the feeling that it's flimsy, or too dense, or too plotty, or not enough, all at the same time. Would any of you mind reading the first chapter (ca. 12k) and tell me if it seems to be working or not? You can contact me via tumblr, or through the e-mail adress in my profile [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/profile).


End file.
